


I've Got My Eye On You

by angryhausfrau



Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:20:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27326437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angryhausfrau/pseuds/angryhausfrau
Summary: This is a fill for booksnchocolate's prompt: charles vane/jack rackham + looking out for each other. I hope I've filled it satisfactorily - I really love this pairing and I was excited to see your prompt!
Relationships: "Calico" Jack Rackham/Charles Vane
Comments: 8
Kudos: 52
Collections: Black Sails Rarepair Ficathon - Round 1





	I've Got My Eye On You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [booksnchocolate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/booksnchocolate/gifts).



Charles will be the first to admit, he doesn't think much of Jack Rackham when he shows up, looking like a stray dog, trying to sign onto the Ranger. He looks like a fop and he talks like a fop and he seems like the kind of man to freeze in the face of a real fight. All in all, Rackham seems like a shit pirate.

Bonny is a different breed all together. Doesn't talk much - but Vane isn't after a conversational partner. And those knives he carries had obviously seen real use. Yeah, Bonny was exactly the type of man Charles was looking for.

Good enough for Charles to put up with Rackham’s shit.

Because the two of them had made it clear they came as a set. The word Rackham had used was partners. The word Bonny has used was married. But it all amounted to the same thing in the end - Charles didn’t get one without the other.

And it’s not like matelotages were uncommon. Charles has sailed with plenty of men bound to one another and he’s brought on crew that came as partners before, that isn’t the problem. The problem is that Charles can’t fucking figure out what someone like Bonny is doing with a useless load of ballast like Rackham tied to him.

But Charles brings them on, sticks Bonny in the vanguard where his knives and his bloodthirsty smile will strike the most terror into their prey, and puts Rackham with the navigator. Out of the way of the fighting and where he can’t cause any harm to the rest of the crew with his weakness. And as long as he doesn’t cause any trouble, and as long as Bonny proves the man Charles thinks he is, Rackham will be allowed to stay.

* * *

Turns out that Bonny’s just as bloodthirsty and skilled with a blade as Charles had thought, leading the vanguard to increasingly bloody victories over increasingly terrified prey. It also turns out that Bonny’s a woman. But by the time anyone figures it out she’s killed forty-seven people and no one on the crew is looking to be the forty-eighth. And by Charles’s reckoning, she’s brought him nothing but good luck. There’s no reason to ruin something good over superstition. And all the normal concerns with having a woman aboard aren’t a concern here - Anne knows how to take care of herself.

Which is good because Jack certainly can’t look after her that way. He can barely look after himself. The number of times Charles has had to give a crewman a look, a reprimand for taking things too far with Jack, he's almost more trouble than he's worth.

He makes one hell of a navigator, though. Jack’s gifted with strategy, there’s no denying that. Able to chase down prizes they’d never have any hope of catching without him. Charles finds himself warming to Jack slowly. He’s still a ponce and a chatterbox and weak in a way that Charles cannot fathom being. And he’s obviously had some sort of education - though Charles would wager he’d mostly done it to himself, for whatever reason - and he talks like he’s trying to impress somebody. It may even work on a different sort of man, but Charles much prefers Anne’s silence to Jack’s endless noise. Still, Charles finds himself taking books from their various prizes and giving them to Jack. Just as a way to get him to shut up for five damn minutes, of course. It doesn’t work, but at least he starts talking about different things - and some of the stories in those books aren’t half bad, once Jack’s gotten through embellishing them.

* * *

And then one of the prizes they've hunted turns on them. Someone on the vanguard got sloppy, got _lazy_ with guarding the prisoners and now they're being pushed back to the Ranger. When Charles figures out what pathetic fuck-up let this happen, the two of them are going to have _words_ – assuming that cowardly piece of shit is still alive after all of this. But right now, Charles is too busy fighting his way to the forecastle, which has been overrun and which is where Jack Rackham is standing, overwhelmed and holding a cutlass like he's afraid it'll bite him.

And fuck. Charles can't stand to lose him, not to the crew of some yellow-bellied Dutch motherfucker with a hold full of slaves.

The next few minutes are filled with blood and screams and the pump of fight fight fight through his veins. No time to think of anything, there's just the pure instinct of how to fight, how to hurt, how to kill – how to  _survive_ \- that'd been beaten into him since he can remember. That he'd taken and honed into something no man can stand against.

Charles stands in the center of the forecastle, surrounded by corpses, hair and clothing stuck to him with sweat and blood, chest heaving. They've won. The fight is over and they've won. Then Charles feels the hot splash of blood against the back of his neck.

He turns, sword raised, pistol aimed, to find Jack fucking Rackham standing over the corpse of some mealymouthed Dutch fuck who'd tried to attack Charles from behind. Jack's got blood on his toff coat and splashed across his face and dripping from his sword and he's got the kind of fire in his eyes that says he won't be taken without a fight. That he too will survive this.

Charles nods to him, one predator to another, and goes to finish off the rest of their prey.

* * *

It's later, when they've killed the last of the Dutch crew and the former slaves are being fed and looked after by the quartermaster and Charles is directing the non-human part of the Dutch cargo into their hold, that Jack finds him again. He's still bloody, his eyes still holding the gleam of the fight in them, and it looks like he may have run at least one other man through. And as Charles makes him wait until he's finished instructing his men to burn the other ship to the waterline, he can't help glancing at Jack from the corner of his eye. He's seeing Jack in a new light, is all – finding him capable in a way he'd have never suspected.

There's no need for his voice to come out so rough when he finally turns to him and says, “What the hell do you want, Jack?”

“I just saved your life, Charles. I would think a thank you would be in order. Perhaps a public recognition of just how brave and dashing and heroic Jack Rackham was in coming to the defense of his captain.”

“Fuck you, Jack.”

“I’d accept that form of thanks as well.” Jack's grin is sly, his eyes are still wild, and he's covered in the blood of a man he slew to protect Charles.

He grips Jack by the back of the neck and pulls him close. “Wait for me in my cabin.”

Jack grins and Charles watches as he saunters away. Bringing Jack Rackham aboard the Ranger may have been a mistake. But it may also have been the smartest thing Charles has ever done.


End file.
